The following post was seen in the comments and deserves examination. It shows how wishy-washy Christians can be. This conversation represents one level of Christianity. A Bible-literalist would answer another way, and a more casual Christian would answer still another.

Unlike many of the people that post here, most of the Christians I know are nice people. However, they don’t realize that they don’t actually believe in the bible nor do they really follow the teachings of Christ. If you have a conversation with them, it goes like this.

“Do you believe in god?” Yes, of course I do.
“You believe that god created the world?” Yes.
“An entire universe, just for us?” Well, maybe not just for us.
And god created man? Yes
“He created man from a handful of dirt?” Well, no, not like that.
“He created women from a man’s rib?” Well, no, not like that.
“How about the talking snake?” Well, that’s a metaphor.
“The tower of Babel?” Well, that’s just a metaphor too.
“Noah’s Ark?” Yes, that happened.
“Two of every kind? From all over the world, including the continents Noah didn’t know of, and they all had enough food and water, space, didn’t die or eat each other?” Well, it didn’t have to happen exactly like that. Perhaps it’s just a metaphor.
“The virgin birth?” Yes
“Really?” Yes
“Jesus was crucified?” Yes
“He was resurrected?” Yes
“Physically walked the earth?” Well, maybe in spirit.
“Good people go to Heaven and bad people to hell?” Yes
“Murderers who convert on death row go to heaven?” Yes, if they believe.
“Good people who haven’t heard of god or Jesus go to hell?” No
“That’s not what the bible says” Well, my god wouldn’t do that.
“Animals and pets go to heaven?” Yes
“But they don’t have a ’soul’, how do they go to heaven?”
My preacher says they do.
“Do you follow the ten commandments?” Of course I do.
“So you rest on the Sabbath?” Well, no, but I follow the others.
“You sure?” Well, as best I can considering that times have changed.
“Aren’t they the word of god?” Well, things are different now. That was the old testament.
“Do you follow the teachings of Christ?” Yes
“All of them?” Well, my preacher tells us what’s important and what’s not.
“Why do you believe all these things?” I’ve never really thought about it, it’s the way I was brought up.
“Do you believe that god exists?” Yes
“What about the other gods, do they exist?” Of course not.
“But yours does and theirs doesn’t?” I’ve never really thought about it.
“Can you prove your god exists” No, but I want to believe that it is true.
“Why do you go to church?” I enjoy the service and the community.
“What that church?” I tried several others and I didn’t like the service or the preacher.
“So you church-shopped?” Yes, you have to find a church that is comfortable for you.
“Is your religion important to you?” It is about how we live our lives as Christians.
“So it’s more about philosophy or way to live a good life than taking everything in the bible literally?” Err, yes, I suppose it is.

If you are a Christian who is starting to understand that your “religion” is a sham, these videos can help:

8 Responses to “The wishy-washiness of Christian “belief””

on 21 Dec 2011 at 2:29 am 1.40 year Atheist said …

Theism makes some specific claims, none of which include the possibility of physical evidence, nor the ecclesiastic interpretations taken by “religious experts”, nor are they susceptible to the charges of evil this or that. For the most part, Theism is not even rejected outright by the Atheists in the “Why I Am An Atheist” (WIAAA) series. What is rejected usually is ecclesiasticism, which is mistaken for Theism. The rejection is not based on logic, but is emotional, with the resulting commonly developed hatred of ecclesiasticism and the blanket condemnation of generalized “religion”. Theism is commonly secondarily rejected merely because in the minds of many of these WIAAA folks, the deity is merely loosely appended to the evil ecclesiasts, and is given no more thought than that. God is rejected as the baby thrown out with the bathwater. When attempting to justify this guilt by association error, all sorts of rationalizations are created in order to spackle over the rational error, including that the deity must be evil if the ecclesiasts are so evil. (Whether the ecclesiasts are really evil or not is a separate topic: the willful delusions to which Atheists are subject.)

As many of these now-published Atheists have pointed out, there is an exhilarating freedom from all absolutes which accompanies Atheism. Exceptions might temporarily be grasped at for relativist purposes, but that is the exception. And that Atheist freedom carries over to include denying any absolutes which might constrain this freedom; this necessarily pertains to those absolutes which ground logic, as well. Free thought it is called. But the rub is this: if logical arguments cannot be grounded, absolutely, then they cannot be “true” in any sense: they are either circular, or openly infinitely regressive. So they are without any merit, other than being just another opinion.

Someone said that no generalizations can be made regarding Atheists, and that I am lying by making claims regarding Atheism as a general principle. But they are unable to refute the position that,
(1) Atheism has no attached principles, either ethical or logical attached to it, or that:

(2) Atheism, in general, is de facto Materialist, having rejected any and all non-material existence merely by asserting skepticism, or that:

An under-asked question in these discussions is “Do you acknowledge that you have started your own splinter religion which rejects portions of the Bible?”

on 21 Dec 2011 at 2:02 pm 5.DPK said …

“1.40 year Atheist said …
Theism makes some specific claims, none of which include the possibility of physical evidence…”

Factually untrue. Theism claims that god or gods intercede in the physical world, which must, by definition, leave physical evidence. The idea of a non-interceding creator god is deism. The deist concept of god is irrelevant outside of creation claims, as the deist concept of god simply lets the universe “play out” according to natural laws which can never be violated.

One again, 40 year has built a position on a false assumption. Stan… why do you never actually engage in discussions here, but only cut and paste your verbal diarrhea from your bat sit crazy blog? You’re worse than the buffoons here that answer every question with quotes from the bible.

Stan… why do you never actually engage in discussions here, but only cut and paste your verbal diarrhea from your bat sit crazy blog?

He’s getting quite soundly embarrassed on his own blog, hence he probably doesn’t wish for any more public humiliation.

Besides that, what does he ever have to add? His approach depends on positing an unfalsifiable and untestable philosophical position based on shifting semantics. He then claims that his strawman version of atheism can’t disprove something that he claims exists outside the realm of provable reality thus whatever it is that he believes (it’s always vague and never his burden to explain) remains undisproven hence correct? Or some such shit and total bollocks like that – it’s all a desperate reversal of the burden of proof. Point out that he’s out to lunch and he bans you anyway.

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